Jatla is not a Shithole
Page 7
“Your bae? Fick me to tears, Dougy, you’re at the bae stage?”
“That’s what we call each other, yes.”
“Fick, that’s such a goddamn stupid word. But I’ll quit busting your balls. If you want to get drunk and take a little gobnap, you know I’m fickin’ game.”
“That’s what I wanted to hear!” Dougbug stands from the stool and walks over to the door. He places a carved sign that says CLOSED on the outside of the door and locks it. “Now, let’s get ficked up!”
(.)(.)
Hiccup wakes hours later with an extremely dry mouth likely from the dragon skins. His head pounds, his body aches with each movement. Drorikh, the Thulean word for fermented dragon’s milk, can be pretty salty, and this isn’t the first time Hiccup has woken up with dry mouth and a slight hangover.
He pushes Dougbug off him and gets to his feet.
“The poofter.”
This also isn’t the first time the two goblins have gotten wasted in the morning and Hiccup has woken up to find Dougbug cuddling him. He gets the notion to kick the shorter goblin, but refrains when he hears a scream from the ink shadow’s room.
“What in the actual fick?” Hiccup goes for his toe knife just as Dougbug wakes.
“Who the fick is screaming? That’s bad for business!”
“Fick, Dougy, get ready. Some trouble is going down with the ink shadow.”
“You’ve got to be fickin’ kidding me,” Dougbug says and he gets to his feet. He rubs the side of his head, winces, and lets out a small, odorous fart. “Sorry.”
“Your secret is safe with me, Dougy.”
Another scream and the massage room door kicks open. The orc masseuse comes tearing out, a towel to her chest and the ink shadow’s tendrils not far behind. The towel whips away and her breasts flop out.
So focused is he on her mammaries Hiccup fails to shriek, as he normally would when witnessing an ink shadow attack. The lady orc kicks into another room just as the ink shadow’s tendrils disappear.
“Fick!” Dougbug takes off to the spare room to comfort his employee/girlfriend.
The ink shadow seeps from the ground behind Hiccup. “Let’s go,” he says, a note of sadness in his voice.
“Fick!” Hiccup spins around, his toe knife at the ready. “Don’t sneak up on me like that. And what the fick happened in there?”
“She wouldn’t give me what I wanted.”
Hiccup shakes his head bitterly. “I told you, orc chippies are for later, at the hotel. This was a simple massage.”
“And a happy ending, no?”
“Well, fick, I thought all massages had happy endings. At least they do in Jatla.”
“Out, both of you!” Dougbug comes out of the spare room wielding a club wrapped in razor wire.
“What the fick did I do?” Hiccup asks, genuinely hurt.
“Your ink shadow put his…his chalupa in her ear! We don’t do Ear Busters here, goddammit! And fick you, Hiccup, now she wants to take a break from our relationship. She’s traumatized! Fick you both. Get the fick out and don’t come back!”
“We got places to be,” Hiccup says just as Barry starts to bubble with anger. “It’ll be worth it, trust me.”
“If you say so,” the ink shadow grumbles.
They hit the streets, and once they are away from Wild Cherry’s, Barry starts in on Hiccup.
“The parade turned into a battle royal, and now I have the worst case of ink balls I believe my kind has ever had.”
“Ink balls? Just relax, you’ll get yours later. Save that stamina, and next time, if you’re into some freaky shit, fickin’ tell the lady before you go putting things in holes that they don’t belong in! Ear Buster? Really, Barry?”
“Ear Busters are quite common at ink shadow massage parlors.”
Hiccup shudders. “You see what I mean when I say your species is ficked in the head? You want goblin chalupas, our fingernails, you get off by blasting sticky hot loads into each other’s ear canals, you’re creepy as fick. The list goes on. I like you, Barry, but my biases and racist undertones against you and your kind are fickin’ justified.”
They pass a goblin defecating in the street. He sees the ink shadow, lets out a little yelp, and swiftly finishes pinching off his loaf.
Barry shakes his head. “You think ink shadows are uncivilized; have you seen your own kind?”
“Pfft! Who hasn’t taken a fickin’ deuce in the street? It’s hard to find a bathroom around here. A commoner once told me Jatla is like New York in that regard, and there are no McStarbucks here, so no free restroom. There are the public urinals, but most goblins have the decency not to dooky in one of those.”
“Whatever. Two down, two to go, Hiccup. I’m still not convinced that Jatla is anything but a mahoosive shithole. The goblin we just witnessed defecating in the streets only furthers my point.”
“At least he didn’t jam his chalupa into someone’s ear,” Hiccup says under his breath.
“What was that?”
He offers Barry a shit-eating grin. “Just relax, Barry, the day is young, our fun has just begun, and lunch is up next. It’s going to be ficktacular, believe you me. This guy can cook!”
“It better be good. Two down, two to go.”
Chapter 8: Three Courses to the Finish Line
“The best Jatla has to offer, like I fickin’ promised.” Hiccup and Barry, still in his disguise, stand at the entrance to the GobTree restaurant. Set in an old house, the restaurant is unassuming during the day. But once the night crowd comes, and their purse strings loosen, it becomes a lively establishment, famous for celebrity sightings and visiting dignitaries.
“Ah, we were expecting you, Mr. Hiccup,” the maître d’ says as she opens the door. She’s in a three-piece tux, her hair clipped short and braided behind her ears.
“That’s right,” Hiccup tells the ink shadow, “Mr. Hiccup. They have manners here, Barry, big league.”
“I can see that” A jet black tongue slips out of the space Barry’s mouth should be and flickers across his face. “I’m famished over here.”
“You and me both, buck-o. Oh, wow!” Hiccup sees the single table set up in the center of the room. All the other tables are gone, and surrounding the single candlelit table are five waiters, each in cummerbunds.
“Please sit!” the orclin named Og Lemon says as he exits the kitchen. He wears the requisite chef hat, but has turned things up a notch with the cravat tucked into the front of his white, double-breasted jacket. “I will personally bring your first dish.” With that, he spins back into the kitchen, a tight smile on his face.
The ink shadow sits at one end of the long table, Hiccup at the other.
“Make it snappy,” Hiccup growls to the waiter with the bottle of wine. The young waiter rushes to the cranky goblin’s side and fills his cup.
“This is wonderful, a beautiful layout if I’ve ever seen one,” the ink shadow says as he swirls the wine in his glass. “And to think I was going to take your chalupa after this!”
“What!?” Hiccup nearly spits some of his wine out.
“Relax, goblin.”
“Hiccup.”
“As I said, Hiccup, relax. If the food is half as good as this presentation, you’ll be moving towards the clear.”
“Fick me,” the goblin whispers.
Og Lemon approaches the table with two chefs behind him, each holding a silver platter.
“Our first course,” he says, again with that tight grin on his face, “is my newest recipe, deconstructed dragon wings marinated in tardigrade liver oil and garnished with boiled Kayi virgin wheat.”
The chefs take away the tops of the platters and Hiccup starts to sob.
“What is it?” the ink shadow asks as he lifts his fork and pokes at the snowman-shaped mush on his plate.
“It’s fickin’ beautiful. Just look at it.”
“The presentation is exquisite, I agree.”
With Og watching intently, Hiccup takes h
is first bite. “Fick me, it’s so fickin’ good. Homerun! Fick me twice and take me out to dinner, this is amazing, Og!”
“Thank you,” says Og.
The ink shadow swallows his bite down and clears his throat. If he’s impressed, he isn’t showing it.
“I’ll be right back with the second course, sit tight.”
As soon as Og and his assistant chefs have turned back to the kitchen, Hiccup places both hands on the platter, lifts it, and shovels the lump of mush into his mouth. “So fickin’ good! See, Barry, this is first class living, the type of living you’ll only get in Jatla!”
The ink shadow clears his throat. “We’ll see,” he says as he pushes his plate aside.
Before Hiccup can ask for Barry’s leftovers, a waiter takes away the plate and Og and his chefs return from the kitchen, this time holding platters with stone bowls on top.
Og again smiles at Hiccup. “I give you my world famous griffin egg drop soup with a side of honey-glazed turtle shell and a dash of non-narcotic Wizardous.”
“Non-narcotic?” Hiccup snorts. “Why the fick would anyone want non-narcotic Wizardous?”
“For the flavor,” Og says, his smile firm. “Now sprinkle it on top of your soup and enjoy.”
As soon as the platters are down and Og is gone, Hiccup dips the nail of his pinky finger into the non-narcotic Wizardous, lifts some of the white power to his left nostril, and snorts it up.
“Yep, he’s right, non-narcotic,” he laments as the ink shadow sprinkles the Wizardous over his soup. Hiccup follows suit, and as soon as the soup hits his mouth, he sighs orgasmically. “Holy ficker-roo, that’s the, fick me, Barry, that’s the best goddamn fickin’ soup I’ve ever tasted! So robust and hearty, so warm in my belly. My fick!”
Hiccup shovels more of the soup into his mouth. He cracks the turtle shell, dips it in the soup, and uses it to scoop even more into his waiting maw.
“Well?” he asks once he’s finished, his lips and cheeks covered in food debris.
“Let’s just see what the next course is,” Barry says, his mood waning.
“What the fick has gotten into you, pal?”
But before Barry can say anything, his bowl is whisked away and Og appears from the kitchen with two more platters. The assistant chefs place the two large platters before Barry and Hiccup as Og explains the contents.
“For our third course, I give you land dragon skulls, the brains of which have been boiled in a soup made of Chiup marrowbone, fried funeral potatoes, and fresh morning drorikh flown in via griffin from Porthos.”
“Sounds wonderful,” Barry says as the top of the platter is removed. With Og watching, the ink shadow sticks a fork into the land dragon’s skull, gets a good piece of brain, and brings it to his lips.
His expression sours and he chews it.
“What is it?” Og asks.
The ink shadow takes a deep breath. “There, ahem, is no flavor to this. In fact, and I’m sorry to offend you, it tastes like shit smells, if that is at all possible. So I guess it has a flavor, the flavor of feces.”
“What in the fick is wrong with you?” Hiccup asks, already well into his fourth bite of brain. “Mine is fickin’ delicious.”
Hiccup’s eyes jump from the ink shadow to Og.
“Wait a damn minute, what the fick is going on here?”
Og glares at the goblin. “I don’t know, Hiccup, maybe you could add some fucking seasoning. Gee, how about something spicy?”
The ink shadow crosses his arms over his chest. “I don’t know what is going on between you, but…”
“What the fick are you accusing me of, Og? Stealing your hot sauce?”
The chef points a finger at Hiccup. “I know it was you, Hiccup!”
“Fick you!” the goblin says as he stands from his chair, his hand hovering over his toe knife. “I didn’t steal shit!”
The ink shadow clears his throat.
“You’re really fucked in the head, Hiccup. Here I was trying to help you…”
“What part of ‘I didn’t steal shit’ do you fail to understand? It was probably one of the fickin’ kitchen staff members. I saw you had an immiNPC in there, can’t trust them, and I’m not saying we should deport them, only that we shouldn’t trust them with nice things.”
“Dammit!” Barry flips the table, and points an inky black finger at Hiccup. “Your chalupa is mine!”
“Fick!”
Like a cannonball out of hell, Hiccup leaps through the front window of the establishment and rolls into a garden.
-68 HP!
Once he’s on his feet, and paying no attention to the flecks of glass covering his body now, he bolts out of the garden and into the streets.
“Fick!” he screams, as he looks over his shoulder to see the ink shadow closing in, Barry’s black form slinking as he pursues the goblin. “Everyone out of the way, fick!”
(.)(.)
Hiccup waddle-runs, cursing Og Lemon for doing him dirty back at the restaurant. He was going to give the hot sauce back, he just wanted another taste. That’s all. Og didn’t need to spike the ink shadow’s food and sabotage the meal.
“The ficker!” he huffs.
With no idea where he should go, and fear that the ink shadow will find him anyway, the goblin’s decently-sized brain kicks into overdrive, going over what he knows about ink shadows, which is little aside from the fact goblins generally dislike them.
They don’t die, he knows that, or at least he’s heard that.
“Fick, I don’t want to lose my chalupa!” Hiccup cries as he pushes through a crowd on the outside street of a residential area.
He finds out very quickly what the crowd has gathered around – a procession of striking garbage collectors has taken to the streets, signs in hand and shouts in unison, protesting a recent wage cut for overtime work.
“I will catch you, goblin!” he hears Barry yell. A couple of goblins in the vicinity shriek when they see the approaching ink shadow. They tumble over each other to get out of the way.
His path anything but clear, Hiccup bursts through the crowd into the center of the striking garbage collectors.
“Counter-protester, stop him!” a burly goblin screams.
A goblin garbage collector with a boily infection running up both arms swings his club, clipping Hiccup in the shoulder.
-97 HP!
“Yoooooooy!”
The visual of a fight taking place and an approaching ink shadow whips the crowd into a frenzy.
A mosh pit of goblin flesh with hidden shanks, sharp claws, yellow biting teeth, squeals and shrieks, and the abundant shouts of the word “fick” gives Hiccup just the distraction he needs to escape.
And this is before the ink shadow shows up, which whips the goblins into a fick-laced frenzy as they all fight for the nearest exit.
“Ink shadow! Fick!”
“Fick!”
“Holy fick!”
“Fick, fick, fick!”
“Fick you, you t-bagging fick-faced bumblefick!”
Hiccup presses out of the madness, even with a big bruise forming where the goblin garbage collector struck him. His hope now is to lose the shadow in the nearby residential district known as Ular Simp, which features a mixture of two story homes enjoyed by Jatla’s middle class.
He runs as fast as his short legs will carry him, the taste of blood rising in his throat from the pace of his breathing, the ink shadow engaged by the crowd but not far off Hiccup’s heels. A door painted red catches the irascible goblin’s attention and he waddle-runs over to it.
“Let me in! Let me in!” He bangs on the door with his beefy paw. “Fick, let me in!”
A slit on the door opens and a pair of eyes look out. “What the fick do you want?” a male goblin asks.
“An ink shadow is after me!” Hiccup tells the eyes as he tries to catch his breath. “He’s the one causing that clusterfick back there. Fick, let me in, pal! I’m rich, I’ll give you whatever you’d like.”
An idea comes to Hiccup. “Let me in or...or…”
“Or what, you stuttering fickwit?”
“I’ll use my magic!”
The retractable wand Hiccup stole from Spew Gorge appears in one hand, his bottle of Hot AzzBalls in the other.
“I’m warning you!” he bellows, looking over his shoulder at the swelling mob, which has spilled out into the lane that wraps into the Ular Simp District. “I’m magic, you fick!”
With a flick of his wrist, Hiccup’s wand doubles in size. He turns his head, takes a huge swig from the bottle of hot sauce, and points the wand at the door.
“Fick you!” Hiccup spits a huge ball at the mangled bush directly next to the entrance.
The bush ignites; without saying a word, Hiccup points his wand at the eyes peeking out of the door.
The male goblin gets the hint. “Fick, fick! I’ll let you in. Don’t burn down my fickpad!”
Hiccup nods, feels a burp coming on, and once he’s sure no one is next to him, he belches another fireball into the street. A young girl goblin looking at him from the window across the street yells “fick!” and pulls her blinds shut.
The door pops open revealing a goblin smaller than Dougbug with a shaved head, a nose turned up at the end, a roll of fat around his neck, man tits each jutting out at the sides like chameleon eyes, and a short pair of bow legs tucked into dirty house slippers with white soles.
Hiccup burps again and produces another fireball.
“Fick! I thought you said you’d stop!” the short goblin shrieks, hopping back to miss the tiny fireball.
Hiccup pounds his chest with his fist. “Heartburn, you don’t fickin’ want it, kid, trust me. Now, enough chatter, we have an ink shadow on our asses and we need to get inside.”
“We?” the short goblin asks.
“Yeah, ‘we’ as in you and me, as in that fickin’ ink shadow will take your chalupa too if we don’t act fast.”
“Fick! Come in, come in!”
The goblin’s home is dingy, as all goblin homes should be. The walls are painted salmon, the loose wooden floors, moldy ceiling, and cracked doorframes a clear indication that the home has seen better days.